Bayer won’t use Mon­santo buy to force GM seeds on Euro­peans

The CEO of Ger­many’s Bayer AG is promis­ing it won’t use its planned ac­qui­si­tion of Mon­santo Co to force ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied crops on skep­ti­cal Euro­peans. Mon­santo in Septem­ber ac­cepted an of­fer from Bayer to pay $57 bil­lion to its share­hold­ers and as­sume $9 bil­lion in debt. The com­bi­na­tion would cre­ate a global agri­cul­tural and chem­i­cal gi­ant - and bring Bayer to­gether with a lead­ing pro­ducer of ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied seeds that are en­gi­neered to re­sist drought, among other things, but viewed with deep sus­pi­cion in Europe.

Bayer CEO Werner Bau­mann was quoted yes­ter­day as telling Ger­man daily Sued­deutsche Zeitung: “We don’t want to take over Mon­santo in or­der to es­tab­lish ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied plants in Europe.” He added that Bayer ac­cepts Euro­pean re­sis­tance “even if we are of a dif­fer­ent opin­ion.” —AP